When one of a plurality of persons serves as a photographer to take a group photo of the persons, the photographer cannot be in the group photo. Therefore, it has been necessary to ask a third person to take a photo or to fix a camera to a tripod in order to take a photo with a self-timer.
However, when there is no third person or when there is no tripod, the camera has to be placed on top of something to take a photo with the self-timer. Due to some location where the camera is placed, it may be difficult to set an angle of view. Further, to perform shooting with the self-timer, a photographer sets an angle of view to have all the persons except the photographer come within a visual field of the camera, pushes a shutter button and then goes into the visual field as a photographed person quickly. On this occasion, due to some position the photographer enters, the photographer may be out of the set angle of view or the positions of the photographed persons as a whole may change so that the photographed persons cannot come within the set angle of view.
Therefore, there has been proposed a technique in which an image of photographed persons except a photographer is first taken, an image of the photographer is next taken, and the two taken images are suitably synthesized to create a group photo having all the persons photographed (see JP-A-2005-94741, for instance).
The related-art technique has been described on the assumption that a cellular phone which has imaging portions in a front surface and a back surface of its body is used. A facial region of the photographer is detected from data of a photographer-side image taken by a first camera portion. Based on data of a photographed persons-side image taken by a second camera portion, a region which does not include any photographed persons is discriminated from regions of the photographed persons. Based on a result of the discrimination, the detected facial region of the photographer is synthesized in the region which does not include any photographed persons.